India 2001 books

Westerman then gave the word of command for their return;
they started at a sharp trot, and he did not allow them to slacken their
pace till he had again passed the ruins of the little village of
Amaillou.
While the troopers were thus preparing to set the chateau in a blaze,
the General himself was not idle; he seated himself in the salon, and
having had pen, ink, and paper brought to him, he wrote the following
despatch to the President of the Convention, in which, it will be
observed, he studiously omitted all mention of the defeat which he had
incurred between Amaillou and Clisson, and the retreat which his army
had been forced to make. The date is given in the denomination which
will be intelligible to the reader, as the Fructidors and the Messidors,
Brumaires and Nivoses, which had then been adopted by the republicans,
now convey no very defined idea to people, who have not yet scrupled to
call the months by their old aristocratic names, or to count the year
from their Saviour's birth.
"Chateau of Clisson,
July 1798.


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